


Dealing with the Rage

by stew (julie)



Category: Batman (Movies 1989-1997), Batman Returns (1992)
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 1996-01-01
Updated: 1996-01-01
Packaged: 2020-09-26 22:56:02
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Rape/Non-Con
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,329
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20397508
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/julie/pseuds/stew
Summary: The Catwoman prowls the night, looking for someone to play with…





	Dealing with the Rage

**Author's Note:**

> **First published:** 1 January 1996 in my zine Espresso 1

# Dealing with the Rage 

♦

The Catwoman liked prowling the night, leaping from balcony to balcony and peering through apartment windows. If she spied something she wanted, she’d glide in and take it, but there was so little she wanted now... She’d pour herself a bowl of milk and whisky, perhaps, or break into a richer place to feast on salmon and caviar. She took a snug little leather jacket for the colder nights, a new pair of slinky boots with the sharpest tallest heels she’d ever seen. Her physical needs were few; unlike the women she watched, caught in their endless round of comfort and consumerism.

Here was one now, weeping through a box of tissues, replaying a message on her answering machine. _‘Sorry, babe,’_ said a disembodied male voice, _‘but I can’t make that movie tonight. In fact, I’m real busy right now, I just don’t have time for this. Maybe I’ll call you when things get quieter, right? I don’t know. But don’t keep calling me, babe. There’s no point.’_

Catwoman sat curled up on the windowsill, watching the victim inside. Still crying hopelessly, the woman played the message again and then, as if misery was inevitable, she sank into the sofa, fumbled for the remote and switched on the home shopping network.

Snarling, the Catwoman dragged the tips of her claws down the glass. The woman twisted in her seat, scared, even as she shuddered at the ghastly noise. ‘Get a life!’ Catwoman advised her; and then she leapt across to the next apartment’s balcony, quickly climbed up to the roof from there.

The woman flung open the window and gazed around her, stared down into the alley five storeys below, folded her arms and shivered as if the cold had bitten her.

♦

On the roof, the Catwoman paused to lick at her hand, cleaning it, then stroked her hand back over an ear. She stretched in languorous satisfaction, rolling her shoulders back, and declared, ‘I feel so delicious tonight. Who shall I play with?’

Scanning the city, Catwoman was disappointed by the quietness. Although, even as she sighed, she sensed a tenseness to the hush, as if people knew she was on the prowl and wanted to avoid her. Or maybe something else was out there roaming the night...

The Catwoman slunk across the roof, leapt over a wide alley to the next building, silently searching around her for the centre of that fearful hush. Her ears flicked, her nose twitched. Something was going on tonight.

She almost didn’t see what happened, but once she’d noticed then her attention was thoroughly distracted from whatever else was out there: a young woman had been hurrying alone down the street below, perhaps heading home after a late shift, when a car screamed to a halt in front of her and she was dragged inside.

Hissing her displeasure, the Catwoman followed the car as it swerved through the streets. But even though she was leaping from rooftop to rooftop, and cutting across whole blocks, she was disadvantaged by speed. When she lost the car in the darkness, she guessed it was heading for the gloom of the city park, and so she ran directly there, swinging down to street level via a series of gargoyles and window ledges and ugly outcroppings of brick.

The expectant hush was stronger under the dank trees. The Catwoman crept across the patchy grass and moss, every part of her expressing distaste. There were some forms of filth she just didn’t appreciate.

And there was the car, having apparently been driven in here along the footpaths, parked at a wild angle at the end of furrowed grass. The woman was struggling, on her back on the damp ground; two men held her down, while a third was kneeling between her legs, readying himself for this deed. Seemed he was wary of exposing his precious assets while she was still kicking. The man lifted one heavy fist, glaring down at her face.

‘Think again, mister,’ the Catwoman advised, stalking closer. The men looked around, startled, but would barely even see her moving in the darkness beneath the trees. ‘Carefully consider all the consequences.’

‘Who the fuck’s there?’ the putative rapist demanded.

‘Your worst fears: a woman strong and bold; a cat demented and violent.’

One of the other men stood. ‘Who is it?’ he said in a whisper. He cleared his throat and said louder, ‘Get out here where we can see you.’

In tones of disgust, the Catwoman declared, ‘You want to be tomcats, but you’re mice just like all the rest.’

And she left the trees, running so swiftly the men barely had time to move. She kicked out, catching the first one beneath the chin and cracking his head back; she pivoted and kicked out at the one standing; she raked her claws down the other’s face. The fight was on. After a few moments, though, the Catwoman realised that she was dealing easily enough with the two who’d been holding the woman down, but the other one was taking advantage of her distraction. Seemed like he intended to carry out his original plan.

While the woman had been putting up a struggle before, she seemed frozen now, perhaps overloaded with confusion. ‘Hey, lady!’ the Catwoman cried after letting fly with a flurry of punches. ‘Deal with him! Kick him where it hurts. Be smart, bitch!’

The woman stared at her, round-eyed, and the man laughed. Catwoman growled as one of the men she was fighting grabbed her from behind, with a startlingly strong and intelligent hold. The other hit her hard in the face, once, twice. If they were planning for her to watch this crime being committed, then they didn’t know about the dark insanity bubbling away inside her like boiling pitch. She moaned a warning, frightened of the destruction she might wreak.

But then a piece of night fell from the sky, wings looming. ‘Batman!’ cried the man with bloody claw marks down his face.

A large boot made intimate acquaintance with the wannabe rapist’s head. The Catwoman speedily rendered the man holding her unconscious. The third man had already run.

The woman was sobbing, struggling to sit up. The Catwoman spat at her, ‘Save yourself next time. Why always wait for a man to do it?’

The Batman was standing there staring at the Catwoman with those beautiful eyes; he was absolutely still, though his cape shifted and swirled around him as if there was a breeze. The woman crawled closer to sit by him, lifted a hand to hold his. ‘Thank you,’ she said to him.

Thoroughly disgusted with the whole thing, the Catwoman turned and darted into the trees. The Man-Bat would get the stupid woman home safe. Let him deal with the obligation of that hand in his.

She heard him cry out, then, his voice carrying clearly through the dankness and the foliage. ‘Selina! Selina Kyle!’

The Catwoman shuddered and hissed – she sped up a tree, and crouched in the branches with her hackles up until sure he was gone.

♦

That was who she used to be, of course. Selina Kyle. She had vague memories of crying over the messages that boyfriends left on her answering machine. Of wearing tweed skirts and twin sets that looked frumpy because they never fit right. Of being the obedient know-nothing administrative assistant to... to the one who made her this way. Max.

Yes, behind the dark madness there were memories of revenge against Max, the man who took her human life and five of her cat lives. She’d spent her eighth life killing him, kissing him through pure electricity until he was nothing but barbecue.

It was no use remembering. The Catwoman had to prowl the night until she’d burned out all her anger, all her rage; then maybe she could go back to being Selina Kyle. When her anger was done. She didn’t know when that would be... Sometimes it felt like it might take forever.

♦

The Batman was loitering, she knew. He was swinging slowly from building to building throughout the worst parts of the city, making his presence known. Waiting for her. Loitering with the best of intentions.

She made him wait for hours. But, as the moon set behind the jagged skyscrapers, the Catwoman landed lightly on the rooftop he stood on, and silently drew nearer, creeping up behind him. When she was ten feet away, he turned and said very quietly, ‘Hello, Selina.’

‘Hello, Bat.’ Staying where she was, but restlessly shifting as if she was expecting a fight. He was handsome, the Catwoman noted again with reluctant hunger; he was handsome even in the mask, for it didn’t hide his eyes or his mouth, and they were two of his best features.

‘How have you been?’ Gentle now. He was so nice she felt like slapping him.

‘Horrified,’ she said. ‘Defiant. Brave. And sometimes so full of angry raging resentment that I can’t remember what I am.’

He was nodding as if he understood. And the frightening thing was that maybe he really did. She kept moving, wholly unwilling to settle, and liking the way he couldn’t help looking at her thighs, long and strong in their vinyl skin. There had always been this tension between the Bat and the Cat, between Selina and Bruce.

But when he spoke it was to ask, ‘What are you?’ in a whisper only cat-ears could hear.

‘The Catwoman. Selina Kyle died on the night that Catwoman became the undead.’

‘It doesn’t have to be like that.’

‘No? Isn’t it that way for you?’

‘I’m learning,’ he said very slowly, ‘to... integrate. To be both Bruce Wayne and the Batman. It’s something I’d like to help you with, Selina.’

‘Why? Because you can? Because you like to help, even though I like to hinder?’

‘Because I fell in love with Selina Kyle. And when I found out she was the Catwoman, then I truly loved her.’

Yes, there were teasing memories of passion and challenge and the most thorough understanding you could find on this earth; the man who’d once offered those things, well, it seemed he was still waiting for her.

But she wasn’t ready for him yet. She hadn’t found her redemption, and sometimes she suspected in her crafty little cat-mind that she didn’t really want to find it. The madness was too involving, you could lose yourself in it forever...

Forever before she’d finish with her anger, forever before she’d be done dealing with brutal men and gormless women. Forever. Even though here was someone caught in the dilemma of human or creature, as she was. A person who was brave not brutal, gentle not gormless. Someone who had stuff to work through, too – grief, he’d told her, not anger.

He was talking softly, sharing his pain with her as if she wanted to know. Telling her it was easier dealing with the stuff now he’d accepted it, accepted both of the truths about himself, trying to integrate his lives into one.

‘Stop talking,’ she said, bored with it. ‘You know you can’t help me.’

‘It’s difficult, to stand by and do nothing while someone you love is hurting.’

‘Deal with it,’ she said, with an air of finality.

He nodded, and seemed about to leave, oh-so-very obedient, though he was terribly reluctant of course. He looked so fine in that rubber suit of his, strong enough to not only cope with her but challenge her. And the sensuality of that mouth... She’d like to bruise those lips until he forgot his gentility.

She was shifting, stretching, almost purring, remembering how delicious she’d been feeling earlier that night. ‘Stop talking,’ the Catwoman said again. ‘Because when you’re not talking, you look yummy enough to eat.’

The Batman smiled at her, silent. Waiting for her.

His self-possession and his willingness almost unnerved her, but she stood taller, in control of the situation. She moved again, enjoying her vinyl skin. She purred deep in her throat and said, ‘I want to play with you...’

♦

They fucked and fucked again, there on the rooftop under the clouds and cold starlight, so wild it was like fighting. So much rubber and vinyl and leather between them – even silly rubber condoms he’d brought with him for protection – so much armour and disguise and protection that not once did skin touch skin. _Bizarre,_ Selina thought admiringly, though for a moment she wistfully imagined beds and comfort and nakedness. The Batman, with his soft heart, tried to care for her, tried to transmute the wildness to passion, but she fought him harder, provoked the darkness in him. A woman could care for herself, after all. It was beyond wild, in the same way she was beyond crazed.

Afterwards, he said, ‘I can’t make a habit of this. I can’t afford that much therapy.’ And she laughed, supremely satisfied.

It was dawn. Time for the Cat to slink home, and curl up in her favourite blankets, and sleep as deeply as all the truly wicked ones do.

‘Meet me again,’ he asked. Knowing it wasn’t time yet to invite her back to civilisation. Though maybe when that time came, Selina would have someone to share her ninth life with.

‘Maybe,’ she said, yawning wide. She licked at her hand, absently fastidious, rubbed at her waist, stroked down her hips.

He took her hand in his, pressed a kiss to the vinyl covering her palm. ‘I love you,’ he said. And then he was gone, wings wide as he swung down to the street below.

The Catwoman smiled, stretched again in her sexy suit, body aching with the memory of his demanding possession. On the way home she stole milk from a doorstep, drank it down in greedy gulps. When she was done, she threw the empty bottle to smash against the brick wall, purred her satisfaction, and ambled home.

♦


End file.
